Monday, November 23, 2009
Meet her four-legged friends
Courtesy of Beverly Amsler
Beverly Amsler of WVTF (89.1 FM) volunteered for a week at Best Friends Animal Sanctuary in Utah.
Courtesy of Beverly Amsler
Fisher, a pit bull and a survivor of Hurricane Katrina, is one of the dogs Amsler became good friends with.
Every member of my family is an avid fan of "Dogtown," the documentary series on the National Geographic Channel filmed at Best Friends Animal Sanctuary in Utah. Each episode tells stories about the dogs at the nation's largest no-kill animal shelter.
These are the dogs left behind in the wake of Hurricane Katrina; the dogs rescued from Michael Vick's dogfighting operation; dogs with special needs or so much emotional baggage they are deemed unadoptable.
With patience and work, Best Friends can turn these discarded dogs into family pets.
Beverly Amsler, morning news anchor for WVTF (89.1 FM), is also a big fan of "Dogtown" and wanted to be more than an idle viewer. Instead of taking her usual cruise for a vacation this year, she spent a week volunteering at the sanctuary.
Amsler, 48, contacted the nonprofit group in May and offered her services for the last week of October.
That week, she said, was unforgettably rewarding.
Learning the system
Amsler flew into Las Vegas on Oct. 24, rented a car and drove to Best Friends, located on 33,000 acres in Angel Canyon near the town of Kanab in southern Utah.
She spent the first day in a volunteer orientation program that included a tour and a safety video. Amsler, who for the past three years has been a puppy sitter/foster/raiser for St. Francis Service Dogs in Roanoke, said the instructor asked if anyone in the volunteer group had experience training dogs. She raised her hand.
"They said, 'Leave your training outside,' " Amsler said. The volunteers were then taught how to walk and handle the residents of Dogtown.
Amsler was assigned to Old Town Hall, one of the many units of Dogtown, home to more than 500 dogs, almost half of which are eligible for adoption. The pooches Amsler worked with wore purple or green collars, a form of identification by degree of sociability.
"Red collar dogs are handled by staff only, purple collar dogs are for volunteers over the age of 18," Amsler said. "Green collar dogs mean anyone can walk them."
And walking is what Amsler elected to do.
For the rest of the week, she had a specific pack of pooches that she worked with, improving their leash-walking skills and observing how they reacted in public situations.
Each dog had a story
She became good friends with her assigned mutts: Nadia, Bobbie, Rascal, Scooby, Inca, Fisher and Snuggles. Her job was to help socialize them and overcome their fears.
And with every photograph that she showed me of a dog she helped, there was a story.
Scooby is highly anxious. Bobbie is extremely timid and will not even drink water if someone is watching. Nadia is obsessed with flying discs. Rascal, a dog Amsler knew as Vegas but has since been renamed, is "very flighty" and almost impossible to coax into a car.
Amsler said Fisher, a pit bull and a survivor of Hurricane Katrina, is blind in one eye. Despite his physical disability and sketchy past, Fisher is an affectionate dog.
"He gave me kisses," Amsler recalled fondly.
Snuggles is an Australian shepherd mix who was among 50 dogs left homeless when his owner died. Amsler said walking the chubby pooch was not an easy task.
"He walks as far as he wants to walk, and then he flops down when he doesn't want to walk anymore," she said. Treats, doled out in very tiny doses, were the only way to keep Snuggles moving.
Twenty-two of the most traumatized dogs rescued from Michael Vick's house of horrors were sent to Dogtown. Known there as the Vicktory Dogs, they all wear red collars and cannot be handled by volunteers.
But Amsler did get to see Little Red, one of the Vicktory dogs, from outside her fenced pen.
"I wouldn't even have known who she was, but I had told [staff members] Betsy and Damien I work for Virginia Tech, and when Little Red came out once, they told me who she was," Amsler said. "She smiled at Damien -- a smile that looks a little like a smirk -- and looked just like any other dog, happy and running around."
Surviving on the cheap
Amsler said she spent the entire week in her hiking boots, treading through the sandy plains and hilly trails with the dogs, taking them into the town of Kanab, and watching and reporting their reactions.
Information provided by volunteers helps the adoption specialists find the best-suited family for the dogs.
Best Friends has accommodations for visitors available for a fee; Amsler elected to "do it on the cheap" and rough it in a tent and sleeping bag.
When nighttime temperatures dipped into the 20s, she sought refuge in her rental car, layering all the clothes she could pull on.
Amsler said the less-than-ideal camping arrangement proved to her that no matter how harsh the conditions, "I can survive."
She said she would love to go back again and would like to organize a group of Roanoke-area volunteers to share housing and travel expenses.
She would also like to share some of the things she learned with local shelters and rescue groups about socializing dogs and encouraging volunteers to take adoptable dogs out for walks or overnight visits.
"What Best Friends does can be translated to other organizations," Amsler said.
